And yet the Avatar had regular training sessions with him, though Yun had told Kyoshi outright that he couldn’t waterbend yet and wasn’t expected to. He would emerge from the practice grounds, bloodied and mussed but with his smile blazing from new knowledge.
“He’s my favorite teacher other than Sifu,” Yun had said once. “He’s the only one who cares more about function than form.”
There must have been strategy at work with Amak’s attendance. Instead of the blue tunic he wore around the complex, they’d dressed him in a set of wide-sleeved robes, dark green in Earth Kingdom style, and a conical hat that shaded his face. His proud wolftail haircut had been shaved off, and he’d taken out his bone piercings.
Amak took out a small medicine vial with a nozzle built into the top. He tilted his head back and let the liquid contents drip directly into his eyes. “Concentrated spiders
nake extract,” Yun whispered to Kyoshi. “It’s a secret formula and hideously expensive.”
Amak caught Kyoshi staring at him and spoke to her for the first time ever.
“Other than Tagaka herself, there are to be no Waterbenders from either side at this negotiation,” he said in a voice so high-pitched and musical it nearly startled her out of her boots. “So . . .”
He pressed a gloved finger to his lips and winked at her. The iris of his open eye shifted from pale blue to a halfway green the color of warmer coastal waters.
Kyoshi tried to shake the fuzz out of her head. She didn’t belong here, so far from the earth, with dangerous people who wore disguises like spirits and treated life-and-death situations as games to be won. Crossing into the world of the Avatar had been exciting back when she took her first steps inside the mansion. Now the slightest wrong footing could destroy the fates of hundreds, maybe thousands. After Yun told her last night about the mass kidnappings along the coast, she hadn’t been able to sleep.
More boats full of armed men landed ashore. They lined up to the left and right, spears at the ready, the tassels of their helmets waving in the frigid breeze. The intent must have been to look strong and organized in front of the pirate queen.
“She approaches,” Kelsang said.
Tagaka chose a relatively undramatic entrance, appearing on the edge of the iceberg as a faraway dot flanked by two others. She plodded along a path that ran around the icy slope like a mountain pass. She seemed to be in no hurry.
“I guess everyone dying of old age would count as achieving peace,” Yun muttered.
They had enough time to relax and then straighten back up once Tagaka reached them. Kyoshi stilled her face as much as possible and laid the corner of her eyes upon the Bloody Flail of the Eastern Sea.
Contrary to her reputation, the leader of the Fifth Nation was a decidedly unremarkable middle-aged woman. Underneath her plain hide clothing she had a laborer’s build, and her hair loops played up her partial Water Tribe ancestry. Kyoshi looked for eyes burning with hatred or a cruel sneer that promised unbound tortures, but Tagaka could have easily passed for one of the disinterested southern traders who occasionally visited Yokoya to unload fur scraps.
Except for her sword. Kyoshi had heard rumors about the green-enameled jian strapped to Tagaka’s waist in a scabbard plated with burial-quality jade. The sword had once belonged to the admiral of Ba Sing Se, a position that was now unfilled and defunct because of her. After her legendary duel with the last man to hold the job, she’d kept the blade. It was less certain what she’d done with the body.
Tagaka glanced at the twenty soldiers standing behind them and then spent much longer squinting at Kyoshi, up and down. Each pass of her gaze was like a spray of cold water icing over Kyoshi’s bodily functions.
“I didn’t realize we were supposed to be bringing so much muscle,” Tagaka said to Jianzhu. She looked behind her at the pair of bodyguards carrying only bone clubs and then again at Kyoshi. “That girl is a walking crow’s nest.”
Kyoshi could sense Jianzhu’s displeasure at the fact she’d drawn attention. She knew he and Yun had fought over her presence. She wanted to shrink into nothingness, hide from their adversary’s gaze, but that would only make it worse. Instead she tried to borrow the face Rangi normally used on the villagers. Cold, inscrutable disdain.
Her attempt at looking tough was met with mixed reactions. One of Tagaka’s escorts, a man with a stick-thin mustache in the Earth Kingdom style, frowned at her and shifted his feet. But the pirate queen herself remained unmoved.
“Where are my manners,” she said, giving Yun a perfunctory bow. “It’s my honor to greet the Avatar in the flesh.”
“Tagaka, Marquess of the Eastern Sea,” Yun said, using her self-styled title, “congratulations on your victory over the remnants of the Fade-Red Devils.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You knew of that business?”
“Yachey Hong and his crew were a bunch of sadistic murderers,” Yun said smoothly. “They had neither your wisdom nor your . . . ambition. You did the world a great service by wiping them out.”
“Ha!” She clapped once. “This one studies like Yangchen and flatters like Kuruk. I look forward to our battle of wits tomorrow. Shall we head to my camp? You must be hungry and tired.”
Tomorrow? Kyoshi thought. They weren’t going to wrap this up quickly and leave? They were going to sleep here, vulnerable throughout the night?
Apparently, that had been the plan all along. “Your hospitality is much appreciated,” Jianzhu said. “Come, everybody.”
It was a very, very awkward dinner.
Tagaka had set up a luxurious camp, the centerpiece a yurt as big as a house. The interior was lined with hung rugs and tapestries of mismatching colors that both kept the cold out and served as markers of how many tradeships she’d plundered. Stone lamps filled with melted fat provided an abundance of light.
Low tables and seat cushions were arranged in the manner of a grand feast. Yun held the place of honor, with Tagaka across from him. She didn’t mind the rest of their table being filled out by the Avatar’s inner circle. Jianzhu’s uniformed guardsmen rotated in and out, trading sneers with the pirate queen’s motley assortment of corsairs.